fixing third person animation bugs

[TheWideMurloc]

So I'm in the process of making a conversion of the BR77 by N7R which uses the DMR/AR animations from the Misriah Weapons pack from Novafinch. Whether this gets uploaded depends on if N7R gives the go ahead, but I would still at least like to get this working for myself. Everything is working dandy in first person, at this point, but I'm getting a strange bug in third person. The weapon, in any stance except firing or reloading, is held askew, pointing up and to the right. this even happens while moving and crouching, and crouched firing retains the glitchy position. I took some screenshots:

 

https://imgur.com/a/0mgvQ0Z

 

Anyone know what is causing this and how to fix it? My modding knowledge is rudimentary at best, and this bug eludes me

[langnao]

Without knowing the details it difficult to determine. I m not sure what was done for the custom animation. But you can turn the weapon bones for the particular animation. Maybe the animation was modified for that particular weapon and thus if u use the animation for another weapon, things will be off? What happen if u switch to Bethesda default weapon animation?

[TheWideMurloc]

I basically extracted the BA2s for both mods and moved the animation files from misriah over to the br77, replacing the br's animations, and moved the meshes for the .nifs to line up with the animations of misriah armory. using vanilla animation keywords straightens the gun, but the model is moved back into the character model where the left arm is holding the barrel due to the altered .nifs. do you know where i can find a tutorial for moving and turning the weapon bones? that sounds like the solution I'm looking for

 

edit: I've been hitting google and seeing If i can find a solution myself, but it looks like it all requires professional tools that are out of my budget, Looks like a dead end unless I can convince someone to do it for me.

Edited June 21, 2019 by mauskal

[langnao]

You need to modify the original animation source files. If u don't have the source, u can rebuild it from existing but u need animation tools.

[TheWideMurloc]

unfortunately i don't have access to those kinds of tools =( I'd need to find someone willing to do it for me

[TheWideMurloc]

Update: The problem actually seems to lie in the humansubgraph data for the br77...im still tinkering to see if i can get it working 100%, but at the moment ive got it working such that the animations work perfectly, in the forward, diagonal forward, and right strafe animations, but every other direction refuses to move in said direction...as if there is suddenly an invisible wall (ie trying left will move slowly diagonal forward, and trying backward will move slowly diagonal backward)

[langnao]

Create custom animation thru subgraph is a bit complex. Its created as an "additive" to existing animation. Say I created a new pistol reload animation which I like to replace existing pistol reload and I only wanna change the third person. Under Actor keyword, "AnimArchetypePlayer" affects the player and let say that is what u want. U need to duplicate that, including everything under animation paths. Add the path of your new animation into the animation paths, preferably on the top line. For target keyword, add your own custom animation keyword so that u can add this keyword to your custom weapon and your custom animation will be used when u use that weapon.

 

The last stage is generating the metadata and its one of the most problematic area. If everything was done correctly, u will use the new animation for ur custom weapon for the above example. Mess up and ur animation will mess up and sometime missing parts for your weapons etc.

 

I assume you have check the wiki ? (https://www.creationkit.com/fallout4/index.php?title=Subgraphs)

[TheWideMurloc]

the metadata might be the step im missing. currently, since im not changing the paths of the animations themselves, and rather just replacing the animations found in the mod's paths, I'm going through the subgraphs of the br77 and comparing them to those of the DMR in the Misriah Armory pack, changing anything in the br77 that doesn't match the dmr, like, for example, where the DMr references animations from gripriflestraight, the BR77 refers to Submachine gun, so I change it to gripriflestraight instead. It's making the animations work in game, just causing the aforementioned movement restrictions with the diagonal backward direction.

 

also i did check the wiki, but only the parts i thought were relevant. In this case I thought all I had to worry about were the animation paths

 

so...i have some questions...it says to generate the metadata, i need to specify an esm file. The mod only comes with its BA2s, and an esp...so what do I put for the esm file?

 

the thing im talking about:

CreationKit.exe -GenerateAnimInfo:SubgraphExample.esm ..\Data ..\Data\Meshes\AnimTextData --speed --stance

Edited June 24, 2019 by mauskal

[langnao]

You need to open up the mod and study what was modified under the subgraph. Its easier to do that with CK. What was modified for the custom animation? weapon reload, weapon movement, weapon firing? Generally, they will have a custom animation keyword and just check which animation was "added". Look at the animation path and see what new animation was added.

 

It doesn't have to be esm, its just the mod that has the subgraph modification and thus can be esp file too. Metadata generation can be a bit hit and miss but one way to know if its done well (other than check in game), u can check one of those txt file under say "AnimationFileData" and see if it contains path to your new animation ...

[TheWideMurloc]

my problem is that I want the subgraphs to remain pointing to the BR77's animation file paths because I replaced those files with those of the Misriah Armory DMR. The issue, then, is that the Misriah DMR animations are built to fit alongside the "GripRifleStraight" whereas the BR77 was built around the "submachinegun".

 

Changing all animation paths in the br77's subgraphs to the paths of the GripRifleStraight whenever it had previously referred to the submachinegun fixed the previous problem of the gun being pointed up and to the right like the pictures show. Now the character holds the gun as intended, and screenshots of it look A-OK. The problem is that doing so has introduced a new problem of the restricted range of motion in third person. I drew up a quick visualization of what is happening.

 

https://imgur.com/a/TTk8jLN

 

The arrow is the forward facing direction of the player in third person with the circle representing the typical directions you are able to move. the red area is the direction in which I am unable to move. I've noticed with some troubleshooting, that the DMR I'm basing the animations from switched animations when moving in the red direction to start using a backpedal rather than a torso turned forward run. This makes me feel like there's an animation path somewhere in the subgraph that I'm missing somehow. I think i managed to figure out the metadata generation, but it didn't seem to have any effect.

Edited June 25, 2019 by mauskal